


Looking Glass SFW Edition

by Feynite



Series: Looking Glass [9]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Not a full story, sfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-05-18 03:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5896963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feynite/pseuds/Feynite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Posting the SFW Versions of NSFW Looking Glass chapters here!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Other Side of Fear

They do, in fact, manage to leave before evening. Thenvunin heads their procession through an eluvian by the city gates, accompanied by Uthvir. Felassan returns and falls into their segment of the procession, a narrow little fox slipping in between herself and Pride. It’s not a large group, though. A few healers, some of the more combat-oriented types, and several hunters. She recognizes three of them from her visit to Andruil’s baths; the bear, and the two others. Or at least, she’s assuming that bear is the same one.

The eluvian they take is by the gates that lead out towards Andruil’s holdings. In the distance she can see odd flashes and swirls of magic. Repair work, perhaps. A breeze passes through several nearby trees. It makes the leaves vibrate, and chime like bells.

The peaceful atmosphere is utterly changed once they pass through the crossroads, and emerge on the other side.

The eluvian they exit by is large and set upon a broad, brown stone platform, at the mouth of a short but wide road. Overhead the sky churns with a fierce storm. Winds press upon them, strong enough that Felassan almost gets blown back through the mirror. She sees the impending disaster and manages to catch him in time, though it only seems to earn her an annoyed look.

“Perhaps you should turn into something larger?” she suggests.

“I am fine,” he replies, in clipped tones, even as his ears press tightly to his skull.

When she puts him back down he struggles, though. The storm is magnificent. The sky churns with colour as wells as clouds, a sea of purples and pinks and even some harsh crimson, split by lightning and rolling with thunder. Rain falls in fat, eager droplets that splash where they land upon the hard surface of her armour, and are blown sideways by the wind. It makes her realize just how long it’s been since she’s seen some really volatile weather. Along the road there are trees. Large, thick-trunked monsters, some easily the size of buildings. Their branches stay clear of the path, though, allowing for the open view of the sky, and creating a tunnel for the wind to go screaming through. Though the trees still seem to be quite alive, thick markings and symbols are carved into the bare surface of their trunks. In the spaces between them she can see deep forest. Moss-strewn branches and sprawling undergrowth, fallen logs overrun with mushrooms and ivy, and shadows filled with hidden things that shy quickly away from sight.

Uthvir whispers a word, and the trees glow. The wind lets up a bit.

“It seems the weather was set on greeting us,” the red hunter notes.

Thenvunin, whose outfit has been rendered hopelessly askew, sneers.

“Why do you not keep that spell _active?”_ he demands.

Uthvir shrugs.

“Most hunters like the challenge of true weather, Thenvunin. We generally only bother dampening it for little children. And guests, of course.”

That seems to be the end of Thenvunin’s good mood. The wind stays steady, but she finds herself appreciating it. The breeze smells strongly of ‘forest’ to her. There is a crispness, a beauty to the air that she savours for a moment, not even conscious of the fact that she’s stopped and turned her face towards the trees until she feels Pride’s hand on her shoulder.

“Come on,” he says. His own hair is hopelessly windswept. He stills when she reaches over to pull a leaf from it. His eyes drift towards her lips. They’re at the back of the procession. Felassan is trying to make his way down the massive stone steps of the platform, and everyone else is facing forward. In a moment of rare impulse, she presses a kiss to the leaf, before tucking it carefully into her pocket.

Pride colours.

Felassan snarls.

They both look over to see if the fox is having troubles. But he doesn’t seem to be, instead only grumbling at the bottom of the steps. She shakes her head at herself, and they resume their trek. High walls wait for them at the end of the short road. The forest sprawls towards them. Overhead she can see the spires of a palace, and behind it, the straight stone face of a beautiful mountain range. The rain seems to swirl and dance around the gates, which are carved in square panels; each depicting a different beast.

Uthvir produces an ivory horn from their belt. A single blast and the gates open wide. Their procession heads through to a busy courtyard.  The level of activity is a bit of a surprise, and a broad departure from the usual, more leisurely standards of Mythal’s palace. Though, then again, who knows what it might look like if the place was expecting a prominent guest to arrive. There is some great beast, freshly killed by the looks of it, in the main square. It’s massive, easily twice the size of a wyvern, with four large tusks protruding from its unfortunate maw. Two elves are quietly debating whether to try and take it inside or just skin it now and parcel it off in pieces. As they do another pair dash by, clearly focused on some task or another. There’s shouting and barked order and demands, and she spots several hunters using some subtle magic to cart a very large statue of a dragon down a staircase and into the palace proper. The weather whirls around them, storms of feeling and magic as much as wind and rain. On some of the higher balconies she can spy, crimson banners flare outwards – like fingers reaching for the warring clouds.

There are stables, too, she sees. Not like ordinary stables, though. The courtyard breaks off towards what looks like a garden, at a glance, broken up only by a few sheltering buildings and trees. A lotus pond, of all things, separates part of it from the rest of the yard. But there aren’t enough plants or flowers among the greenery for a decorative garden, and when she spies the first flash of white, it arrests her attention.

She’s not expecting her heart to catch in her throat.

In the beautiful stables sit several halla. To her eye, they seem to shine. Their horns are carved with intricate patterns she doesn’t recognize, and there are red, embroidered blankets settled over their backs, but there’s no mistaking what they are. One sits in the grass while two more graze, calm and clearly accustomed to the bustling courtyard around them. An elf with Ghilan’nain’s vallaslin on her face is playing a low tune on a flute. Perhaps soothing them just in case something unexpected should happen in the chaos of activity, and cause them alarm.

_Halla._

She has no idea why this, of all things, is making her eyes burn. She used to see them every day, after all. But they look the same, she thinks. For all the strangeness surrounding them, for all the beauty of the blankets on their backs, they look the same. As radiant and regal and proud as she knows them to be, no more or less magical than they had been the last time she saw them.

“Three halla!” Curiosity notes. “That is an awful lot. I suppose it makes sense, though. Andruil is Ghilan’nain’s wife, after all.”

“We have six, actually. The others are likely on a hunt,” Uthvir declares, glancing towards her. “Have you never seen them before?”

It takes her a moment to tear her eyes away from them. To stick her gaze to the floor of the courtyard instead.

“I have seen them before,” is all she can manage to say.

There are better moments to be rattled, she decides.

Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to shake off the mood that’s stolen over her. As Uthvir and Thenvunin lead them inside, she finds herself turning and looking again, back towards the halla. Even though it can only make her heart clench, she stares at them until they are inside, and the closing door at last bars them from her view.

Inside, Andruil’s palace proves only slightly less claustrophobic then her Arlathan holdings, and even more strewn with opulent trophies, pelts, and magical taxidermy. The main hall is arranged around a massive statue of the huntress, with many trophies set upon pedestals of varying height around her. The whole thing is placed in gold, settled underneath a narrow skylight that filters the storm’s chaos through several faceted panes, and scatters the sunlight onto glowing animal skulls that reflect it further, filling the room with deep shadows and brilliant columns of light. The effect makes the statue seem to loom.

The guest quarters of the palace are larger than the previous ones, but otherwise not too different. One major deviation is that the main bedroom – Mythals’ – lets out into a small garden, which several of Andruil’s people seem to be in the process of remodelling. Thenvunin oversees that, and assigns the rest of them to preparing the chambers and ‘making them suitable’. Pride seems to have a good enough idea of what that entails, and sets everyone to various tasks. Felassan disappears at one point when he’s supposed to be helping her air out the bedding, only to turn up again when the work is almost done. She wonders if he was spying on their hosts.

They get most of the work done before nightfall, but only just. Uthvir arrives after the sky has darkened, and bids them come and eat with the hunters, offering the same hospitality they had at Andruil’s estate. They don’t demand that she serve them, thankfully. The dining hall of this palace is twice as busy as the dining hall of Mythal’s, and roughly four times as loud. There is raucous drinking and boasts, calls for a song from one of their contingent – a long faced healer who nevertheless belts out quite a lovely tune – and someone actually seems to have a pleasant conversation with Thenvunin about some past hunt or another.

She wonders at the excitement and sheer _wakefulness_ in the air. In many ways it’s more alert than any other place she’s been in, though she can scarcely place why. But whatever is going on beneath the earth, whatever suffering the dwarves are enduring, it seems as if Andruil’s people are honestly quite happy themselves. She wonders if it isn’t the newness of discovery. However dangerous, however strange, what they are finding and doing in the Deep Roads is different from what’s come before. While the rest of Elvhenan seems stuck in their own glory, there is a new frontier being explored here. New treasures to find, quarry to seek, and resources to plunder.

She considers this as they eat at one of the lower tables, spared most notice as these hunters seem less bored than their city-bound kin. At least, at first. Than someone makes mention of something, and Uthvir gestures towards Pride.

“Ah,” the red hunter says. “But the white wolf has fallen from Mythal’s favour. Perhaps he might welcome some comfort!”

She freezes, and focuses a glare at Uthvir. They only shrug back at her, raising an eyebrow as if to say ‘ _you_ were the one who did not want to be friends’.

There is a call for Pride at one of the larger tables, then, as the ranking hunters seem set upon getting as much of ‘the story’ as they can out of him. When he rises to their summons, she moves to stand with him. He stops her with a hand on her shoulder.

“It is alright, I will only be a moment,” he assures her.

She’s not convinced. But for now, she stays put; her food forgotten as she watches the interactions closely. Pride is good at deflecting unwanted attention, though. He gets some of the hunters boasting about themselves rather than asking after his accomplishments, and returns flattery in such a way as to disarm most innuendo. Still, hunters are indeed more blunt than Mythal’s people tend to be, and after a few too many ‘invitations’ and ‘suggestions’ she finds herself gritting her teeth.

And she isn’t the only one, it seems. A low growling kicks up, and she spies Felassan – sitting under the table, of all things, picking at a plate of roast venison and glowering at the ranking hunters. It could be her imagination, but he looks a little stranger than usual. His paws seem to have too many toes.

Well, that’s none of her business, really. He can have however many toes he wants, she supposes. It probably makes eating easier. Though, being an elf seems like the more direct approach for that sort of thing.

A thought strikes her.

“Psst,” she says.

The fox’s ears flatten. He gives her a sullen look.

“What?” he asks.

“Do you know any of them?” she wonders. “Can you distract them?”

He shakes his head, but then seems to pause, and reconsider.

“I could knock a sconce onto their table. That would probably be at least a little distracting,” he reasons. The dining hall is lined with massive sconces, burning with gold and silvery flames. One of those toppling, she thinks, would definitely make an impression.

“Could you get away with it?” she wonders.

One of the hunters brushes a hand down Pride’s shoulder. She scowls, and Felassan grumbles.

“Yes,” he decides.

Then he darts off from under the table, disappearing into the chaos of the dining hall. She waits, watchful, and thinks she sees a flash of silver from somewhere at the side of the room.

As it happens, Felassan does _not_ knock down a sconce.

Felassan knocks down nearly _all_ of the sconces.

It starts with one of the ones nearest to the high table, of course. There’s a small flash, hardly noticeable amidst all the flames and flares of cooking fires and sparks of spells being let off anyway. Then a low groan, which actually does get a lot of the talking to quiet. The carved base of the massive sconce cracks, and she sees the problem straight away; rather than crashing towards the table, it’s falling to the side, towards the one next to it.

And towards the seating beside it, too. Where a dozen hunters, Uthvir, and Pride are all situated.

She’s on her feet in a second, but the moment of danger passes rather swiftly; the sconce falls like a toppling tree, smacking the one next to it but striking a barrier raised by half a dozen reacting hands before it can hit anyone sitting below. Still, the second sconce falls and hits a third, and then a fourth, before someone thinks to try and halt the toppling chain of events. Fire sparks on the floor and catches on the table clothes. Magical flame hits the cooking fires in a burst of sparks that make the air smell like lightning. The _bang_ of toppling metal is matched by the storm outside.

When one of the hunters at last catches the fourth sconce before it can strike the fifth, there’s a moment of surprised silence.

“Well,” Uthvir says. “Is this a new hospitality ritual I was unaware of? Destroying the holdings of your host seems to be becoming a bad habit for your people, Thenvunin.”

Thenvunin looks livid.

“What makes you think this was our doing?” he demands. “Perhaps you let the wooden base go to rot.”

Any hope of this explanation flying is killed when a familiar bear lumbers up from the side of the room, holding a struggling silver-and-green fox by the scruff of its neck. There are a few blinks as the bear deposits the fox onto the middle of the table, but apparently this is not terribly unexpected behaviour. What was her name again? Banathim? The beast traps Felassan between her paws, as the little fox shakes under the gaze of Andruil’s hunters.

At least she’s already standing, she thinks, as she begins to move towards the table. That was… slightly less seamless than it could have been. But she’s not about to let the fox suffer for this, if she can help it.

“ _Felassan?_ ” Pride asks.

“I saw him use a spell to knock the sconces over,” Banathim asserts. “There’s magic marks at the base, and it smells like him if you do not believe me.”

“Who is this?” Thenvunin demands.

“He was a late addition to our party,” Pride tells him. “A guide. Supposedly skilled.”

“Well. It would seem we have a vandal on our hands,” Uthvir muses, rapping at the plate in front of them with a bone from their meal.

Thenvunin puffs up in outrage.

“Unacceptable. I… _apologize_ for the poor behaviour of my people, good hunters,” he grinds out, glaring absolute death at the fox on the table. “Felassan will be punished severely.”

Her first impulse is to insist that it was as much her fault as his, but Pride’s cautioning of how to behave considering her own lack of station stalls her, for a moment.

“I believe it was accidental,” she says, instead. A few curious eyes turn towards her.

“Yes, it was an accident!” the fox agrees. “I did not mean to. I am sorry. I was only startled, and used magic by mistake. Why would I do something like this on purpose?”

“You used magic by _mistake?”_ Uthvir drawls, though they seem a little amused. They reach over and grab up the fox themselves, glancing at her, and then it. Their lips purse in consideration. “Well now, Felassan. The only people I have ever known to use magic unintentionally have been little children.”

“It… happens, sometimes,” Felassan says. “With unfamiliar spells.”

“Uthvir, he is one of ours. I will punish him,” Thenvunin insists, though without much energy.

“Are you certain? I could always just snap his neck here and now. He hardly seems a consequential sort; I would wager our ladies would call it even on that,” Uthvir says.

At that, Thenvunin and Pride both look appalled, and she feels a jolt of genuine alarm. The fox trembles, though, and light kicks up around it. Not like a deliberate transformation, though. More like… well. Actually, rather like he’s been struggling to keep his shape, she thinks, and has just now lost control of it. It’s sporadic and strange and he seems to fight it for a moment, before Uthvir drops him, and he gives in. There’s a whirl of light and magic, and an elf is left crouching on the floor.

A familiar elf.

He tries to hold his hood over his face, but the clothes and the shape of him are familiar.

 _“Ghilashim?”_ Pride exclaims.

She gapes.

Ghilashim? Felassan is _Ghilashim?_

…That does explain quite a lot, actually.

“It is the little child from the city!” Uthvir says, chuckling. “Oh, this is delightful! The boy has a hopeless infatuation with the white wolf. Did you put your name on the list, in hopes of having a grand adventure and sweeping him off of his feet, boy?”

The glare Ghilashim fixes Uthvir with is fierce.

“I am _not_ a little child, I am twenty-six years old!” he insists.

The hall bursts into raucous laughter at that. Pride looks aghast, and Thenvunin looks like someone just shoved a lemon in his mouth. Curiosity has gotten up too; though her expression seems more, well, curious than anything else.

“A stowaway!” one of the other high-ranking hunters declares in glee.

“A babe! Oh, how precious. I bet those palms have never once held a bow!” another says.

“Does he know knives yet? Look how soft his cheeks still are!”

“My cheeks are _not soft!”_ Ghilashim insists.

They aren’t, really, she supposes, though something about his face certainly is. It’s also very red, as he darts uncertain glances towards Pride, who seems deeply unsure of what to make of this particular situation.

“Ghilashim, what are you doing?” Pride finally asks. “Why would you lie? Why would you come here?”

Ghilashim looks at him, and shuffles awkwardly in place.

“I was only trying to help,” he insists.

Uthvir waves dismissively.

“The motive is obvious. He wanted to steal away to wild and unseen lands, perform daring deeds and win your hand!” the red hunter declares.

“Shut up!” Ghilashim snaps at him.

“Enough!” Thenvunin bellows in turn, grabbing the young elf by the collar, and pulling him sharply to one side. “I said I would punish the culprit, and I shall. Doubly so for falsifying his name and claiming a duty that was not his. You say you are twenty-six, boy? That is of age. If you are going to make claims to adulthood, then you can accept a full punishment for making foolish mistakes.”

Even as Thenvunin says this, though, there are a rush of objections from the hunters. Suddenly the matter of the sconces is a trifle, and Ghilashim is just a lad, and the hunters at the high table want him to sit and tell them all about how his young heart goes aflutter at the sight of Pride. And has he ever held a knife before? A sword? Does he know how to make arrows out of magic or ride a tamed mount? Who are his parents? Twenty-six and already able to take a fox’s shape, for a Waking-born that’s impressive!

The change is as amazing as it is immediate. Suddenly it’s like being back in Ess’ tavern, watching all of the patrons fuss and jeer and offer suggestions. Thenvunin gives Ghilashim a sour look, but then sighs and lets him go.

“Alright then. It is your hall, hunters. But he is going back the city at first light, and Mythal can decide what punishment he has earned for coming here under false terms,” the ranking elf declares.

In the end, though, most of their group is assigned to help pick up the fallen pillars, while the hunters fuss over Ghilashim. If nothing else, it does get Pride away from them again, though. And their intentions towards the young ‘Felassan’ are much less objectionable, in her opinion. He seems to prompt everyone to bring out their stories about being young hunters. Curiosity listens avidly, while she helps shift some of the fallen pillars into more manageable positions. Pride and some of the hunters together get them standing again, with assurances that the craftsman who made them can be drummed up in short order, and see to proper repairs.

Thenvunin starts making noise about it having been a long day and about there still being matters to attend to in the guest chambers, though. At length the whole of their party manages to withdraw from the dining hall. At which point Felassan finds his ear snagged in a tight grip by the ranking elf, who looks furious once again.

“You young fool!” Thenvunin declares. “What _is_ this? Madness!  A twent-six year-old in Mythal’s escort! Was there ever a real Felassan? Is there some guide out there wondering why his people left without him?”

“No,” Ghilashim insists, shaking his head, looking fairly cowed. Then he gestures towards her. “But _she_ told me to knock over the sconce!”

All at once, everyone’s gaze snaps towards her.

Thenvunin’s glower turns marginally more wary. Pride straightens, and the look he gives Ghilashim immediately has the young elf paling.

“No, that is true,” she says. “I asked if he could do it, and he did. It was only supposed to be one sconce, though, not half the hall.”

“So you did _not_ tell him to do it; you only asked if he could,” Pride reasons, folding his arms. “I am certain young Ghilashim misunderstood and in the heat of impetuous youth, acted rashly and without thought to the consequences of his actions.”

“I did to save you!” he insists. “From those hunters. With their jeering and their – their looks!”

Pride raises an eyebrow.

“I am confused, Ghilashim. Were you trying to rescue me of your own volition, or acting on someone else’s orders?” he asks.

“I think he was hoping to get credit for wanting to rescue you but shift the blame to someone else,” Curiosity volunteers.

Thenvunin gives Pride a long look, as if he is trying to puzzle something out and coming up utterly blank on it.

“How do _you_ keep inspiring these things?” the ranking elf finally demands.

“Because he is excellent!” Ghilashim insists.

The compliment doesn’t seem to be having the intended effect. Pride actually looks a little bit pained.

Thenvunin doesn’t seem satisfied, though for a moment his gaze turns a little uncertain, as he looks to Pride, and then glances at her. He gestures, sharply, and turns away from them all as if they’re a headache he can no longer be bothered with.

“If you embarrass me in front of Andruil’s people again, _Ghilashim,_ your age will not spare you from punishment,” he warns. “The hunters will expect us up early for some barbaric ritual or another. You will stay here, in these chambers, until arrangements can be made to send you home. One of us can convey you safely back to the city, I am sure. Your blasted parents must be out of their minds.”

“I am fully grown!” Ghilashim insists. “I will accept punishment for what I have done. I would do it again, without remorse!”

“You are twenty-six!” Thenvunin snaps. “You do not even know what punishment is! No one in your life has raised a hand to you, have they? Do me favour, child, and do not make me the first.”

There is enough warning in his tone, apparently, that Ghilashim heeds it, and subsides.

With one last, stern look, Thenvunin turns and heads towards his chambers. As the door closes she thinks she hears him muttering more curses about furs.

As soon as he’s gone, she raises a hand, and smacks Ghilashim soundly upside the head.

He staggers, clearly not at _all_ expecting it.

“You tit,” she says.

Ghilashim is Felassan. Felassan is twenty-six, and kind of a shithead. With a massive crush on Pride.

“She struck me!” he protests, looking at Pride.

She does feel a pang of sympathy for him at the look on Pride’s face, which is… less than kindly.

He looks rather like he is counting to ten in his head, in fact.

“Do you realize what could have happened?” Pride asks him, finally. “You were pretending to be someone with skills you do not have. What if we had relied upon them? In fact someone _did_ rely upon them, and you comported yourself with disastrous ignorance and unsubtlety, nearly felled an entire hall, and only earned us a reprieve by virtue of failing to maintain your transformation spell. And _then_ you attempted to turn Thenvunin upon someone who, were she to be punished, would face far more severity than you ever would. What were you thinking?”

Ghilashim’s expression, which began to fall as soon as he looked at Pride, is utterly devastated. There is a long moment of silence, in which he seems to inch perilously close to tears.

“I only wanted to help,” he says.

Pride’s expression does soften, just a little; but Ghilashim runs off, then, heading towards one of the bedchambers. At least the palace affords more private ones than the city holdings had. The door slams behind the young elf, and the remainder of their party look like they can’t decide whether they’re amused or appalled by all of this.

“Does explain a few things,” Curiosity decides.

 

~

 

It’s still a while before she’s able to get Pride for a moment alone. She’s mostly thinking of Haninan’s letter, and giving him the chance to read it, if possible. The corridor leading to the guest rooms has a high ceiling, covered in carvings and lined with what look to be the wings of massive birds. Curiosity stands with her and stares at them for a long while, before retiring to her room. Pride at last finished allaying the concerns of some of the rest of their party, and heads towards her.

He stops a few feet away, looking at her as if suddenly uncertain.

All at once her mind turns in a very specific direction. Towards the feel of him in her arms, his mouth against hers, his skin warm and flush and…

She swallows.

“We should talk,” she says. Her voice comes out quiet, barely more than a whisper.

Pride nods, and starts moving towards her again. There are a few empty rooms left to choose from. She opts for the nearest, and he follows without a word. The interior is fairly simple; a decent-sized bed, some furniture with bizarre tiny antlers on the handles, and a small window that looks out towards the palace walls. As soon as Pride gets in, she makes herself focus, and hands him Haninan’s letter.

“You should probably read this,” she says.

Pride blinks at her as if she just started speaking gibberish, but then comprehension dawns.

“You read it?” he asks.

“And Curiosity,” she confirms, with a nod. “I think she got impatient.”

After regarding the letter for a moment in silence, Pride sinks into a nearby chair. She takes a seat on the bed and watches him. His eyes scan over the text, before he blinks, and stares a little blankly at the surface in general. As he listens to whatever message Haninan meant for him, she finds herself staring at all the little pieces of him. His fingers. His shoulders. The way the light in the room casts itself over the angles of his face. It puts her in mind of the Deep Roads, and the first poem he recited to her. _The cup of the ocean…_

Could she ever write him a poem, she wonders? She doesn’t have his aptitude for these things, not really. Are there words for him in her? Are there ones that could do him justice? Just trying to imagine it makes her thoughts stall, and come up short.

He looks up from the letter, and stares at the wall for a moment. Lost in thought, that settles into the silence between them, and seems to fill it up.

At length, he shakes his head. And then he turns towards her.

His own gaze skitters across her. It flicks away from her face, and then back again, as if taking in the full picture of herself perched on the bed, before he turns his head a little. He clears his throat.

“Thenvunin was right when he said we would have to wake early,” he tells her. “There will probably be a hunt, and we will likely be expected to join. Particularly if Uthvir decides we should.”

She supposes that means it isn’t quite safe to talk, then.

Slowly, she stands up, and takes the letter away from him. She slips it into her satchel, and then lingers for a moment, uncertain. He is right there. They should probably part and sleep, if what he’s said is true. Or, if they’re going to stay awake, they should be searching. Looking for any clues on how to stop what Andruil is doing, or anything else they might find, really. Or they could slip away, under cover of darkness, and head for the nearest entrance to the Deep Roads. Or she could go wake up Curiosity, and start on those shape-changing lessons.

A thousand things to do. All of them important – not least because each step gets them closer to curing Pride.

She reaches for his cheek. She honestly means to just brush her hand across it. To offer the gesture, the reassurance that she hasn’t forgotten their kiss (as if she ever, _ever_ could). But he leans into her touch, and lets out a breath that brushes across her wrist, and she suddenly can’t bring herself to withdraw. She brushes her thumb gently across his cheekbone, before settling her hand against his jaw instead. He leans up and she leans down, and their lips meet in the middle. Soft and a little dry, at first. Still, the point of contact seems to spread warmth straight through her.

She moves her other hand to his face, as well, cradling it as she coaxes his lips apart. It doesn’t take much. He’s a quick learner, and he darts his own tongue into her mouth this time. He closes his hands around her waist, but rather than pulling her nearer he moves forward on his chair, until more of him is off of it than on.

When she at last pulls back, his lips follow hers for a moment. He nearly topples off balance.

She moves and catches him by his shoulders, instead. He blinks, and then moves back into the chair. She finds herself rather missing the feel of him against her, even through all the layers of their clothing and amour.

“I think I might be the one getting carried away this time,” he says, hoarsely.

Something inside of her clenches with _want._

“Stay,” she asks, before she can talk herself out of it.

She almost regrets asking as soon as she does. There are still so many uncertainties, and she’s by no means angling to insist. She opens her mouth again, ready to apologize, but the look on his face stops her. His own want is written so apparently there that no one could mistake it. His hands are still on her waist. His shoulders are firm beneath her palms. She doesn’t want to let him go, doesn’t want to see him leave. Even if it would only be to cross the hall. Right now, for this moment, she just wants to have as much of him as she can.

“Yes,” he agrees; as breathless as if she’d just kissed him again.

 

~

 

Eventually, they do sleep.

They end up tangled in furs and blankets and one another. She wakes to Pride kissing her; one of his hands curled around her face, his lips at the corner of her mouth. His fingers brush across her brow. It’s not precisely the most comfortable of scenarios, though. Dried sweat and itchy furs and the scent of the night’s activities cling to both of them. Not repulsive, by any means, but she has a sudden urge to go sit under a waterfall for a while.

Barring that, the washing basins in the room will suffice, she thinks.

Still.

She takes a moment to kiss Pride back, properly, as she blinks herself awake. The light in the room has gone from the dim glow of evening ambiance to a cold, stormy, pre-dawn grey.

“We should get ready,” Pride reasons. His voice is rough and low and apologetic, and makes her wish they could spend the morning right where they are – even with the itchy furs and dried sweat. But that’s never really been her life. So she contents herself with brushing her thumb across the shell of his ear, and sighing on him a little bit.

“We should,” she agrees.

His lips purse, a little. Obviously as displeased with that state of affairs as she is.

By some miracle they still manage to get up before everyone else, it seems. They make it to the common room of the guest wing with nary a soul in sight, dressed and clean and armed, no less. She takes advantage of the calm to give Pride a hand with his hair, running her fingers gently across his scalp before tying it back for him. He gives her plain silver ties to work with, and leans against her knees, easier and more relaxed than she might have expected after a first night together.

Though he does periodically ask her if she’s feeling alright.

“I am _fine_ ,” she tells him for the thousandth time, when she finally finishes brushing her fingertips across the shaved sides of his head and pretending it’s an important part of the hair-fixing process. “I am not the one to worry about, anyway.”

He gives her a _look,_ and she almost reminds him of just who has contracted an incredibly dangerous disease, before she remembers where they are. So instead she checks him over in silence. But he seems, mercifully, more or less the same.

He’s still sitting in front of her, with her hands on his shoulders, when the main door opens.

Uthvir stalks into the hall. They’re clad in their typical, shining red armour; though they’ve added a crimson cloak to the proceedings this time, too, with a narrow hood and built-in mask for the bottom of their face. The material of it shimmers like spilt wine when they move, and the edges curl away just before they touch the ground. They’ve got a javelin braced across their shoulders, and two long knives clink from either side of their hips.

When the red hunter catches sight of the two of them, they pull down the mask portion of their hood.

“Well!” Uthvir greets, with a sharp smile. “How cozy. And here I thought I would find everyone lazing in their beds.”

“Uthvir,” she replies, with a nod.

“Did you ship the little fox back off to his parents, then?” the hunter wonders.

She and Pride blink at one another.

Somehow, Ghilashim had crossed neither of their minds recently. Funny, that.

“No,” Pride admits. “That is for Thenvunin to handle.”

“Ah, and we mustn’t spare Thenvunin,” Uthvir declares, with a nod. “Speaking of. I suppose I shall do my duty as host and rouse your illustrious leader. As well as the rest of your party. I hope your people enjoy being jabbed with point things.”

So saying, the hunter disappears unerringly towards Thenvunin’s chambers.

She sighs, and nudges Pride with her knees. Quiet morning done with, then.

“I will go wake up Curiosity,” she says. “Before Uthvir does it the unpleasant way.”

A loud and distinctive shrieking, followed by Uthvir’s laughter, erupts from the direction of the nicer guest rooms.

Pride nods.

“That would probably be best,” he agrees.

She sets off for the room Curiosity selected. Pride seems to be taken with a streak of benevolence, as well, and heads for another of the occupied rooms. She thinks one of the healers took that one. A tap on Curiosity’s door yields no answer. When she pushes it open, she finds the room within is one of the airier ones. The window is a bit larger, and looks out over the garden, letting in more light and colour than most. Curiosity is a giant ball of blankets in the middle of her bed.

All she can see is a single tuft of dark hair sticking out from the top.

“Curiosity?” she calls.

No answer.

Concerned, now, she moves closer; and as she does she picks up the low rumble of snoring. She pokes the blanket lump, making an educated guess at where an arm might be.

“Curiosity?” she tries again, more loudly.

“What?” Curiosity’s voice demands from the midst of its den, low and sleepy and definitely edging towards an unexpected degree of surliness.

“Curiosity, did you sleep last night?” she wonders.

Finally, the blankets flip back, and her friend’s head emerges. She’s treated to the sight of wide blue eyes, dark, disheveled hair, and a jaw-cracking yawn.

“It is still night,” Curiosity insists.

“Not anymore,” she replies. “Uthvir’s waking everyone up.”

“Uthvir is a menace and they can go hang themselves,” Curiosity grumbles. She then follows this statement up with a series of grouchy muttering that sounds suspiciously like ‘peck out their eyes and feed them to snakes’, but she could have misheard… at least some of that.

“We are probably going hunting, though,” she muses. “You can shoot your bow. And if you kill something good, I bet the hunters will let you try bloodwine.”

There is a pause.

Followed, at length, by a tremendous sigh, and the blankets being thrown back. Curiosity struggles her way out of bed, looking particularly tired, in fact. She double-checks for any signs of Blight or obvious trouble, but it looks like nothing more than a poor night’s sleep. Or possibly a few too many drinks at the banquet the night before.

By the time she manages to emerge with an armed and dressed – if still droopy and surly – Curiosity, most everyone else has in the main hall. Pride could only spare a few from Uthvir’s efforts, it seems. Probably because Uthvir’s methods worked much faster. And then it turns out that only the elves who have proficiency with weapons are expected to go on the hunt, so most of the healers get to go back to bed anyway. So does Ghilashim, who spends most of the time glaring at the floor, until Thenvunin catches one of the healers by the arm.

“While we are gone, talk to whoever runs the eluvian here and see if you cannot escort our wayward child back home,” he asks.

Ghilashim glares upwards, at that, but looks back down again swiftly enough.

“Ah, that would be Lennehn. You can probably find him in the main hall for the morning meal. He will probably be a hart, or something with antlers,” Uthvir helpfully informs the healer. Then the hunter tsk’s. “Really, Thenvunin. Can you not learn _anyone’s_ name? Sometimes I am flattered you even recall mine.”

Thenvunin colours, and scowls, and generally looks like he hates this entire situation and wishes they would all die so he could go back to Mythal’s nice, peaceful gardens for a good hundred years or so.

“Are we to depart without breakfast?” the ranking elf asks, instead.

Uthvir shrugs.

“The storm is waning. Our quarry will vanish with it. Eating can wait until after we hunt,” they reason.

She won’t argue with that. A full belly would just slow them down, anyway. And despite everything, she finds there’s a note of anticipation to her. The energy of this palace is infectious. The vibrancy of the wilderness around it is compelling. She wants to go, she finds. She wants to hunt. The desire is a wild feeling, pulling at her senses, begging her to go and take down something big and sustaining.

When they finally make their way towards the main courtyard, she finds herself in a rare, eager mood. She can’t help it. She wants to link her arm through Pride’s, but she settles for just walking close beside him, light on her feet. None of her weapons are particularly good for hunting, but she can improvise. Especially if they’re hunting some _interesting,_ which, under the circumstances, she rather anticipates. Several of Andruil’s people also seem to have swords and weapons cut out more for combat than ambush, so it seems a good guess.

Her mood shifts somewhat, though, when her gaze is once again arrested by the halla pen. There are, indeed, six of the animals this time. Uthvir leads their party towards the stables. The elf she’d seen before, the tender with Ghilan’nain’s vallaslin, is up and yawning. Even she, though, might not have been at all misfit in another time and place. She smiles at them, and at Uthvir, and yields her charges without complaint; three to Andruil’s people, including Uthvir, and one to Thenvunin. The rest of them, apparently, will be walking, and the two remaining mounts will be staying behind.

That’s probably for the best, really. She can barely stop looking at the halla even as it is; if she actually got to ride one, she’s not sure how she’d react.

The storm from yesterday is, indeed, still going strong. Rain drops lightly into the courtyard, but once they get past the doors by the stables, it turns into a real downpour. The motive behind Uthvir’s hood and cloak becomes abundantly clear, as they’ve barely begun to move before all of them are more-or-less drenched. Thenvunin tries holding up a barrier to repel the droplets, but Uthvir discourages it.

“Better wet and energetic than dry and weary for this hunt,” they say, and surprisingly, Thenvunin actually takes the advice.

She keeps a worried watch on the halla, but these animals are not subject to the elements the same way their descendants would be. Not only are they beautiful and surprisingly hardy, the rain barely dapples their pristine fur. In point of fact, they seem to enjoy it; turning their heads up every so often and making swishy back-and-forth motions with their ears.

They’re having _fun_ she realizes.

It makes her think of an old halla who had been the keeper’s favourite for many years. He had been a playful buck, even in his declining years, with a particular fondness for blossoming trees. In the spring, if the clan passed through the right territories, they would often set up camp in a field of pink and yellow petals. The old halla had loved to sit in the breeze and try to catch them in his mouth. When he had finally died, the keeper had planted a blossom tree over his grave.

She wonders if the halla in this time are as immortal as the elves.

That would be fitting, she thinks.

She’s so busy looking at the animals, the first thing she notices when Uthvir pulls back a bit is that one of them is closer to her than the rest.

“Do you know how to ride?” Uthvir asks her.

She blinks up at them, nearly as startled by their voice as she is surprised by the question.

“Where would she learn a thing like that?” Pride asks from beside her, his expression neutral as he looks up at the hunter.

Uthvir shrugs.

“Perhaps wherever she saw one before? Mythal does not keep them. Does not see the need, as I understand. So I must admit, I am curious as to where she happened upon one of Ghilan’nain’s treasures. There are none in the city, not even in the lady’s own holdings.”

“There are many images and impressions of halla in the Dreaming,” Pride says.

She almost laughs. She can’t help it; her mood is strange.

“There are indeed,” the hunter agrees. “So you dream, doll? Do you dream well?”

A glance up at them reveals that their expression is somewhat difficult to read. Especially with the hood, and the flurries of rain obscuring her vision.

“Not always,” she settles on saying.

It seems to put an end to the conversation, at least.

The road from the stables in narrower and not quite so stately as the one from the eluvian. It clearly sees a lot of use, though. In the Free Marches or Fereldan, she’d call it a good road. There are obvious hunter’s signs in the woods; though they are made with magic, it seems, and she doesn’t recognize them. The tree branches sway, and the scent of the rain catches in her hair. The sky churns with clouds. Every so often and rumble of thunder, like the roar of a dragon, breaks across the world. She finds herself mirroring the halla, before long; turning her gaze upwards.

Uthvir stops them a few times to check the hunter signs, and at length leads them off the main road, and down a steep, narrow trail that leads towards the mountains. The rush of a river, not far off, adds to the din of the storm. It makes her think of her russet wolf dreams, but only in the vaguest sense. That’s a problem that can wait until it can’t anymore.

The halla handle the paths with the talent she would expect of them. Some of the on-foot warriors don’t fare so well. But the weather at least seems to prove an amply distraction for Curiosity, who catches rain drops on her tongue, and comments thoroughly on the feeling of water soaking through her clothing. Gradually, the trail turns rockier, and the thick forest thins into slick grey boulders and broken ground.

Uthvir halts the hunting party.

A sound catches her ears. Beneath the rain, and the distant river. It’s almost familiar. A low, reptilian growl, near to a croak. Like the low call of a wyvern, but different, too.

“Stormchasers,” Pride says, in the tone of someone who has just figured something out.

She raises a hand to quiet him, because it’s clear they’re meant to be listening, and waiting for some further direction in whatever Uthvir gathers from the sound.

When the line of the red hunter’s shoulders changes, she turns to Pride.

“What are they?” she asks him, quietly.

“Large,” is the first thing Pride says. Then he shakes his head. “They are like serpents with wings. They follow in the wake of storms, and hunt spirits, sometimes. That makes them unwelcome in most lands.”

“And we are doing everyone a great favour by dealing with them while they are in ours,” Uthvir says, gesturing to one of the other hunters. “They will be by the river bend. There are small animals and spirits that congregate there. Good hunting for them; and now they are good hunting for us. Riders will flush them out. Use magic sparingly, and if you get close enough to strike at one, do so. Ranged fighters will wait on the ridge. Be mindful of your aim. If you hit a hunter or a halla, it’s most likely the end of you. The rest can block off the river, so the chasers will be forced up towards the bowmen, and can’t escape down the falls instead. Use barriers if they aim to fly over you.”

She spares a concerned glance at Curiosity. But her friend only looks excited.

Still. If this was her clan’s hunting party, she’d insist that Curiosity should watch such a hunt a few times, at least, before participating in one. Especially if careful aiming is required. Not that her friend is half bad with her bow, but what would a seasoned hunter consider good enough for this kind of thing?

“Be careful,” she says.

“I will,” Curiosity assures her. “Stormchasers are large, like Pride said. Especially the wings. Those are the best things to hit; I read about it. Then they cannot fly away and the people on the ground go and bash in their skulls.”

“Well. Alright,” she decides.

The party splits, then; the riders take the road further down, and the archers head up, and she and Pride and two of the hunters – one of whom is the bear, Banathim, she sees; and it’s probably a testament to how distracting she finds halla that she didn’t notice that sooner – make their way through the trees, towards the roar of the river. It’s careful going over slippery rocks until they reach the bank.

Then she sees their quarry.

‘Large winged serpents’ would certainly work as a description, in the same way that ‘big hot lizard’ might technically be used to describe a dragon. The stormchasers are barely smaller than dragons anyway, and perhaps much longer, she thinks, though it’s hard to tell; of the five she can see, none of them seem to reach a coherent end. They are chasing wisps around the river; dipping into the water and then cresting back out of it, drinking and snapping at one another. Their scales are the same dark purple as evening clouds, shimmering wet and bright, like gemstones. The membranes of their massive wings are flecked with red veins, and their eyes are white as pearls. They clack boney jaws at their kin and snap up wisps, and one of them seems to have caught something bigger.

Pride stiffens at her side.

The stormchaser is holding something bright and twisting. A spirit, she realizes. As they watch, the beast clamps its jaws down, and shakes its head. Strange sparks of magic burst from it, and the spirit writhes, crying out as the colour in it dims and twists, and tiny wisps of it break off. The other stormchasers catch these. Clamping their jaws over them the same way the halla had caught raindrops.

She winces.

“They are killing it,” Pride hisses, voice low.

“They do that,” Banathim says, with a huff. “Nothing for it, right now. We have to wait on the riders.”

“We cannot just _let them_ kill it!” Pride insists.

The bear stamps a foot down heavily on his cloak, as if convinced he might run off on some ill-conceived rescue mission at a moment’s notice.

“If we rush in too early, the stormchasers will bolt, and get away. And then they will keep on chasing storms and eat many more spirits,” Banathim explains.

Pride’s expression falters.

And then tightens into anger, and a surprising degree of obstinacy.

“It is not our place to let that particular spirit die for the sake of other, hypothetical ones,” he insists. “We are here now; we can save it now.”

…Oh.

She swallows, as Pride and the bear continue to bicker in hissed whispers, and looks back towards the stormchasers. They don’t really need to rush out at them, though. They just need to distract them from their meal long enough for the spirit to escape, if it can. A lot of things can distract a predator from their meal without giving up a chase. If they’re well-fed, almost anything can do it. If they aren’t, another, better meal might work.

“What else do stormchasers eat?” she asks the remaining hunter in their group.

The woman shrugs.

“Deer, elk, usual prey beasts, really.”

“Are they afraid of elves?” she wonders. “They know we can kill them?”

“Yes. They’re mostly blind, but they can pick up on magic. If we get too close they’ll scent our emotions, and scatter,” the hunter explains.

There’s a moment, then, while everyone pauses, and looks at her, and considers.

Pride with some mounting concern.

“Well,” she says. “I think we have an obvious solution.”

“But what would you even do?” Pride asks.

The stormchaser chomps down on the spirit again. The sound it makes sets her gut twisting.

 _“Something,”_ she decides, “Trade weapons with me, Pride. If they can see magic, mine won’t work.”

Pride hesitates, for a moment; but the scream must have wrenched at him, too, because he doesn’t protest when she takes his sword. Nor when she deposits her own blade and shield into his grasp.

Without further delay, she begins to make her way further up the river. Pride hisses at her, and she waves reassuringly to him. She’s not a fool. These are creatures she’s never fought before. But she doesn’t need to kill them, she just needs to distract them until the cavalry arrives. She darts along the bank, quick as she can without the risk of toppling into the river, until she’s close enough to see the individual scales on the stormchasers’ serpentine hides.

As she nears, one of the beasts snaps at the fellow who has caught the spirit. The challenge seems half-hearted, but it gives her an idea.

The water is shallower here. Still choppy and probably deceptively deep, in places, but she doesn’t need to go far. The stormchasers challenge one another with quick, snapping motions that threaten jabbing teeth. Drawing her sword, she eases her way down the bank, until she’s close enough to reach the nearest chaser.

Then she jabs at it.

It’s not the beast holding the spirit, but for this to work, it doesn’t always have to be. The stormchaser rears towards her, and she flattens herself against the bank.

 _Nothing, nothing,_ she thinks. _I am nothing, and nothing is here, not at all, no._

The stormchaser waves its head about. Up close she can see the pattern of the scales on the underside of its jaw. But it doesn’t look towards her, or sniff the air, and after a moment it turns away.

When it does, she makes for a different section of the bank, and jabs at a different beast.

It’s not enough to frighten them. The sword scratches their hides but they are covered in little nicks and tears of comparable quality anyway. It does start to infuriate them, though, as they begin to decide that their fellows must be taking jabs at them – because nothing else is there – and quarrel more frequently. After a few minutes it’s enough to get them all ganging up on the stormchaser with the spirit in its maw; if only because envy combines with irritation, and the cocktail makes the whole flock aggressive.

Perfect.

The lead stormchaser lets up on the spirit as it settles on defending itself rather than slowly tearing apart its prey. It doesn’t drop the poor thing, as she’d hoped. Instead it keeps it mouth full and sends irritated sparks and jolts of magical lightning towards the others.

This does have the benefit of making them all even more upset, though.

Before long she needn’t add any jabs to the proceedings. Which is a good thing, because the river has started to electrify.

But that’s a problem of its own. With the water becoming uncomfortable to the stormchasers themselves, sparking at them all with abandon, their wings are beginning to unfurl.

She’s trying to figure out what she can do about that when the air seems to, all at once, grow heavy and oppressive.

It’s an oddly familiar sense. Not in what it evokes, but in the strange sort of atmosphere that settles over the river. The stormchasers go still. The water is sparking, but apparently that irritation is of a lesser concern to them now. Eerily, almost in unison, they turn their heads upwards. She follows their line of sight. All she can see is the same storm that’s been tearing across the sky since yesterday.

The stormchasers apparently see something different, though. They huddle closer to one another. Instead of taking wing, they hunch their necks, and waver; like nugs suddenly caught in a trap. But try as she might, she can’t see any trap. There’s just the feeling in the air. Like the sky itself has dropped down and turned malevolent; like there are things. Biting, stinging, clawing things that are lying in wait for whatever might flutter above the treeline.

When the riders burst towards the river from the opposite bank, the stormchasers let out terrified calls, and begin climbing all over one another in their haste to flee towards the cliff. That direction, she realizes, is the only one that doesn’t feel menacing. Like bizarre eels, the creatures struggle their way up the river towards it. The riders give chase.

Only one turns to take a more ominous path. The lead chaser, with the spirit still in its mouth, had been pushed further away from the cliff by all the commotion. Apparently deciding that the distance is too much for it to manage, it flees towards the other end of the river, keeping low and making strange chittering sounds of fear.

Fear.

She races back down the bank after it, but the other hunters have already gotten barriers in place.

She knows where she’s felt this before, she realizes, as the stormchaser crashes against the magic; clearly aware it’s there, but desperate to break through. It finally drops its prey. The small spirit hits the water, and a moment later she sees Banathim go splashing towards it. The barriers turn, curling the stormchaser towards the bank, where it can fall prey to blows. It at last gives in to the urge to flight over its sudden fear of the sky, and tries to hurtle itself higher; but it’s too late. Pride catches the creature with a sharp blow that drags along its belly. The other hunter joins in, pinning one of its wings.

She breaks into a run. But by the time she gets back, the beast is clearly in its death throes.

Still; she helps Banathim back to shore, taking the small, trembling spirit from the great bear and offering her a shoulder, until they all collapse against the bank. Far enough away that the sparking river doesn’t bite at their heels.

Pride staggers towards her. He’s carrying her sword, covered in stormchaser blood.

The spirit in her arms trembles a few more times, and gradually begins to fade.

With a jolt of alarm she sits up.

“Is it dying?” she worries.

“No,” Pride assures her. “Just going back to the Dreaming, where it can heal.”

He reaches over, and brushes a touch over the glowing approximation of a head. A moment later, she’s left with a vague sense of gratitude, and empty arms.

“What was it?” she wonders.

“Terrified,” Pride wryly supplies. “Anything beyond that was too difficult to tell.”

Drawing in a deep breath, she slumps back against the bank.

Terrified.

Yes.

So had been the Stormchasers.

So the question, she supposes, is why the river had suddenly begun to feel like she’d just been dropped into the Nightmare’s domain.

 


	2. Repeat Offenders

Setting camp among the small party of hunters, with ultimate authority lying in the hands of Uthvir and Thenvunin, feels a little like trying to figure out how to bed down in a field full of scorpions. It has her actually thinking fond thoughts of the expedition to the Deep Roads with Mythal’s people, back when Pride’s authority was intact.

She finds herself carefully sizing up the hunters, in between running around trying to help Pride meet Thenvunin’s particular demands about his tent and the layout of the camp, and other things which Uthvir doesn’t seem inclined to contradict him on. She finds herself sizing up Thenvunin, too, but she’s already seen him fight at his best, she suspects. Or as near to it as anyone can come in a tournament setting.

Banathim’s strong enough, of course. She hasn’t seen the bear do much magic yet, though. It would be dangerous to make assumptions about her abilities in that field, then. The other hunters she can recall placing well enough in the tournaments, here and there. And they seem to know their way around the wilderness much better than Mythal’s people ever did.

Uthvir’s the big mystery, she supposes. The looming, vaguely sinister question mark of the group.

The hunters get their tents up quick. Banathim disappears inside of hers, escaping the damp with her latest kill. Uthvir watches the bear cram itself into the entryway of the tent, and then sucks in a breath through their teeth, and glances over to where she’s gathering up firewood.

Even magical fires need something to eat, after all, unless anyone wants to expend the energy to keep them going by other means. She practices a little magic on the branches; staring at them a bit, and focusing, and trying to dry them out without catching them on fire in the process.

She combusts a fair few, but it’s still an easier job than trying to figure out how ancient elven tents are meant to work.

She sees Uthvir watching her, and moves a little further off, gathering some more branches. The hunter strides over. Points towards her, and snaps.

“Leave that task, doll,” they say. “I will be fetching us our supper, and I suspect I will be needing another set of hands for that.”

“I can help,” Pride immediately volunteers, looking up sharply from his work on the tent.

“I can, too!” Curiosity cheerfully suggests. “Me, pick me, please, I am having such an interesting time with hunting!”

Uthvir raises an eyebrow at the pair.

“As delightful as a hunting party of such _enthusiastic_ companions may be, I would not dare draw you away from your more pressing duties,” they say. “This will be quick, and dull. And since the doll knows how to handle a kill, she can help with the messy bits.”

So saying, then, the hunter makes a dismissive, shooing sort of gesture at her friends.

She catches Pride’s eye, and offers him a reassuring look. She can handle Uthvir, she thinks. Well. She’s been alone with the hunter a few times now, and has suffered none of the dire consequences that anyone had worried about for it. Thenvunin only glances at them, but voices no objections as she sets aside her firewood, and follows the red banner of Uthvir’s cape through the barrier of gnarled and twisting trees along the side of the road.

A few small animals scurry away through the undergrowth as they push through, and for a few minutes she’s baffled as to what they’re supposed to accomplish by clomping through the dense foliage. Even the lightest of feet would struggle not to make noise by passing through it. The ground is uneven, and slippery from the rain. It’s enough to nearly convince her that the excuse of hunting is just that, and that her apparent guide really does have something nefarious planned. But then she spies the rough lines of animal trails, and sure enough, the hunter leads her onto one.

“What are we hunting?” she wonders.

Uthvir glances back towards her. They consider her for a moment, and then lift their arm and point up towards the swaying branches over their heads. Small grey birds are roosting in them, she realizes. Or mostly grey. A few are more of a warm amber colour. The hunter says nothing at first. She wonders if they’re meant to catch the birds. They seem like poor prey; more feather than meat, she would guess.

After a minute, though, one of the birds opens its beak, and lets out a shriek that sounds entirely incongruous with its round little body.

“I heard them on the way up,” Uthvir says. “It’s the birds mimicking the call of a type of large cat that lives in this forest.”

“We are hunting a large cat?” she asks, not bothering to hide her distaste. That doesn’t sound like much of a delicious dinner. Given the supplies they still have, she thinks she’d rather abstain from fresh meat in this instance. And she’s more than had to ‘make do’ in her life before.

Uthvir snorts.

“That would be a trophy hunt, and one well beneath my prowess at this point,” they say. “We are hunting what the cats hunt. What their presence in these forests allude to. And that is a quarry large, dangerous, and delicious.”

“And called...?”

“I believe the full name is ‘Beast of Best Parts’, but most of us just refer to them as Dinner,” Uthvir admits.

She huffs a breath at that, equal parts surprise and amusement. It makes her think of her clan’s own best hunters, and their strange little traditions and practices and in-jokes. And yet, she considers the matter as they start walking again.

“That does not sound like a dull hunt to me,” she notes.

“How marvelous all the world must seem from the perspective of the unjaded,” Uthvir replies. “Now if you do not mind, these things _do_ have ears. Tread lightly, and do not speak any further until the prey is dead.”

Well. At least if they’re not going to talk, she won’t have to field any prying questions from them, either. And she still has her weapons with her. She keeps a hand close to her blade as they make their way down the narrow little animal track. Uthvir is light on their feet, and quieter than she is. That strange quality to their movements strikes her in force again. A hair-raising sensation that makes her think she could blink, and they would go from being at her front to at her back. A knife in hand.

Cole had been terrifying sometimes, in his way. Innocuous to the point where it became dangerous. Uthvir is clad all in bright red, and yet the little birds and scurrying animals of the forest startle more at her passage than theirs. The shadows of the trees fall over their path. The air smells heavy with rain. Slick leaves and small, reaching branches catch at her arms. But they move without either trouble or hesitation.

 _What are you?_ she wonders again.

One of the grey birds shrieks.

There’s blood on the bark of a nearby tree.

Uthvir halts, and so does she. Her gaze moves up. She doesn’t have much experience with big cats, but she’s heard things. Stories out of Seheron, mostly. They like to hide in trees, and suddenly she finds herself wondering if that was one of the birds after all. But the bloodied trunk only leads up towards a stashed kill. Another fawn, it looks like. Must be breeding season. The body is tucked up into the ‘v’ between two wide branches, largely untouched. The nearby trees seem empty, too; though the foliage is thick enough that it would be difficult to be certain.

After a moment, Uthvir gestures to the right. Beyond a massive tree of a kind she’s unfamiliar with, with sharp blue leaves and bark overgrown with hungry vines. In several more beyond it, nestled high amidst greener leaves, she can only just see a pair of feline eyes watching them. Tensed and silent, so still that she might not have ever seen them, without a cause to go looking for them. There’s a footprint near the trail, she notes. Bigger than her own hand.

They regard the cat, and the cat regards them; and then the red hunter turns, and she delays only a moment before following them deeper into the trees.

She wonders just how far they plan on going. If there are signs of their prey, she can’t pick them out among the other obvious traces of wild creatures. But then again, she doesn’t really know what they’re looking for. Hoof prints? Paw prints? Droppings? Scent markings? Antler scrapings?

At length the trees thin enough to reveal a small pond. She almost doesn’t realize it’s actually a pond at all, at first. It’s so overgrown, it almost looks like a clearing instead. Thick algae and lotus-like flowers crawl across the top of dark water. The trees around the pond sport broad leaves, that drip thick droplets of accumulated rain downwards. Splashing over moss and tiny white flowers.

She thinks of the white flowers in another forest.

Uthvir gestures at her to get down, and she does. Crouching, looking for whatever they’ve spotted. They lower themselves, too, and all of the air seems to crawl with a new tension. Expectation. It should suck her in, and for a moment, it does. She can feel her pulse underneath her skin. Nerves singing, as she knows they’ve seen _something_ , but not _what_ or even precisely where. She follows the line of their gaze, but spots no trace of movement between the trees. No eyes, no beast.

She needs to watch, she knows. Give how little information she has, that’s crucial. She has to be prepared for any number of things.

But for some reason, her gaze keeps dropping back towards the flowers. Drawn there, as if by some magnetic force. They’re exactly the same, she realizes. Exactly the same as the little white flowers that had bloomed all around… all around the russet wolf’s forest. That shouldn’t be so remarkable, she supposes. They’re _in_ a forest, and that was a dream _of_ a forest, and of course the flowers were probably of a kind that existed in the world. And might even have still existed in her time. They’re simple enough to look at. Small and white, sweet-smelling…

Uthvir moves.

She scarcely registers it, as she finds herself reaching down and gently taking one of the blossoms between two of her fingers. She can see the veins on it. The soft fuzz on the green stem, and the delicate lines, so thin and faint upon the petals. The center, dark and black, until she tilts it into her palm, and it falls out into her hand.

The petals flutter to the ground. Simply and gently, as if the only thing holding them together has abandoned them of its own volition.

She stares at the tiny bone fragment left in her grasp.

What?

_What?_

Her mind is still racing over the possible implications of finding a damn bone shard in a flower in the middle of the woods when something bellows like an angry ox, and comes crashing towards her.

Her head snaps up, and her fist closes around the bone fragment. The beast, she realizes, was _in_ the pond. It comes thundering out of it. Uthvir is little more than a red flash on the periphery of her vision. But whatever they’re doing, it doesn’t seem to be effectively countering the massive creature charging straight at her.

It may, in fact, be encouraging it.

Her brain registers an equine face full of incongruously sharp teeth, and a long, scaled body. Squat limbs and barrel torso and _speed_ , a surging sprint as it opens its snapping jaws and lets loose another ox-like bellow. The moment slows, and she can almost feel it. The blood in its veins, the faint magic crackling over it. The mud and rain-slick plants crushed beneath its clawed feet. Her right hand is still holding the bone fragment, and for reason, her reflexes won’t let her drop it; and so she grabs her shield, instead, raising it with her left arm and angling it so that the sharp teeth angling towards her scrape across its surface.

The impact is hard, but not hard enough to knock her off her feet. A scaly tail thrashes. The beast moves as if to get around the obstacle, and she recovers enough sense to counter it; shifting around and withdrawing the shield, just long enough to get another glimpse of those sharp teeth before she _slams_ it against the beast’s skull.

It reels back, and that gives her enough of an opening to angle the edge of the shield towards its neck. The strike only stuns it, though. The hide’s too thick and her shield isn’t sharp enough to split flesh, and the beast’s bones are too durable to break without significantly more force, it seems. But it lets her get to her feet, ready for another charge as it rears back…

And a spear splits through the back of its skull.

Straight through, and on into the ground. She sucks in a few breaths as the body twitches and the trail thrashes, and the supposedly delicious creature spills dark blood into the muck beneath it. Already dead, but not quite finished moving.

Uthvir strides forward.

“My apologies. It seems I failed to anticipate just how… spirited being flushed out of hiding would make our quarry.”

She glares at them.

“You did that on purpose,” she accuses.

But something is moving again. Not the beast. Another shape, a shadow. Resolving out of the forest. Curling around the base of a tree behind Uthvir.

For a half a second, she’s confused enough and alarmed enough that she thinks it’s a real wolf. And she isn’t too worried. But then the shadowy shape moves in just a certain way, and she realizes. The bone fragment in her hand.

She’s still holding onto it.

“I am flattered that you think I have that much influence over the whims of the local wildlife. But in fact, I am a hunter, not an animal trainer,” Uthvir says. But she’s barely listening to them, now. She gets her hand towards her belt pouch right as a lupine shape slides out of the trees behind the hunter.

The russet wolf tilts its head, regarding them for a half a second as she stalls, and stares at it.

And then its lips spread to reveal sharp teeth, and it snaps at the air.

Or… not the air.

Its bright, glinting teeth close around something dark and thick, like water; and she’s given to the incongruous thought that it’s bitten into Uthvir’s _shadow_ , before she realizes that it might not be quite so incongruous a thought after all. Her eyes widen as the hunter gasps and reels backwards, as if grasped and _pulled._

She shoves the fragment swiftly into her belt pouch, and draws her sword instead.

Something growls at her.

But as soon as she’s no longer touching the thing, whatever the wolf’s doing seems to stop. Uthvir staggers and turns, and the air around her crackles with magic and alarm and _fear,_ so visceral for a moment that it makes her think of the Nightmare again. Her own blood is singing in her ears, but there’s nothing there, of course. No wolf. No trace of even an invisible foe. The red hunter’s shadow is whole enough where it spills across the forest floor.

 _“What?”_ they snarl, just the same. Their expression twisted in a grimace of pain. She moves to try and see if there’s any injury on them, only to find the blade of one of their knives angled towards her, instead. The pretense of charm is utterly gone from them, now. Their eyes are hard, the points of their teeth bared, and it makes her think of a wounded animal that will bite any hand that comes near.

“What was that? Did _you_ do that?” the hunter demands, still snarling, as surely as the beast they’d killed had snapped its jaws at her.

“No,” she says, tensed and ready in case she needs to defend herself again.

“You saw something,” they insist. “You were looking past my shoulder.”

“I do not rightly know what I saw,” she says, which is… somewhat true.

For a moment, she’s not sure if Uthvir means to try and kill her on the spot. The air is so tense, she can feel it. Can feel the threat of it. Like every branch in the forest has suddenly become a blade, and all of them are angled towards her. The speared corpse on the ground gives another twitch, and the spilled blood around it steams.

And then the hunter straightens back, and retracts their blade.

They keep it in hand, though.

“What did you see?” they demand.

She hesitates. But she has the feeling that failure to produce any kind of explanation will see that knife coming back up again.

“There was an animal. It bit your shadow,” she admits. It sounds ridiculous. But she has no idea what would make for a more plausible lie in this situation.

Uthvir stares at her one wary moment longer. Then they cast their gaze around the forest and nearby trees instead. The recently disturbed pond, and the dead prey. A muscle in their jaw twitches, and their cloak whips sharply through the air as they head back towards the trail.

“We are leaving,” they decide, sheathing their knife and taking their spear back with a sharp pull. They whip it once through the air, magic crackling, and the blood burns off of it.

She bends to retrieve their kill.

“Leave it,” Uthvir says.

“But it is the whole reason we came out here,” she counters. They came out here, hunted this thing down, and killed it. She supposes if they leave it, the big cats and some scavengers will get a full meal out of it. But even so.

“There is something out here that is far more dangerous than that thing, and I do not care to stand in what might be the middle of its lair without even knowing what it _is,”_ the red hunter snaps at her. “And considering _your_ first response when being charged at by a snarling predator is apparently to cower behind a shield, and not even bother to draw your actual weapon, I would suggest you do as I say and follow me out of here. Now.”

The last they say resounds through the trees like a clap. A few birds take off from their roosts, and something snaps a branch not too far off. Uthvir raises their spear, eyes narrow and arm steady, and yet somehow they seem more jittery to her than anything else.

Jittery, but still terrifying.

She stares down at the corpse.

They odds of her successfully carrying that thing out of here all by herself are… very low.

She moves to follow the hunter, and gets another surprise when they gesture for her to take to the trail first, instead.

“Keep in front of me,” they instruct.

“I can handle being rear guard, you know,” she says. And part of her wishes, surprisingly, that she could tell them that the threat is probably done with now. That the wolf only seems to mess with them when she’s touching part of its skull. But that would likely entail explaining how she knows about these things, and she has absolutely no intention of doing _that._

“And shall I trust you at my back?” Uthvir wonders. “Walk swiftly, and only speak if you see that creature again.”

She resists the urge to let out an irritated curse, and does as requested instead.

They return to camp empty-handed, with Uthvir thunderous and tense, weapons still drawn, and herself feeling awkward and off-balance. The hunters, at least, seem more than willing to attribute their overseer’s foul mood to an unsuccessful hunt. As soon as she can manage to do it without being conspicuous, she draws back behind Banathim’s tent, and checks on the bone fragments.

There’s only one piece.

But it’s the size of two.

She stares at the black speck, and feels an uncomfortable lurching in her gut at how little she really knows about it. For a moment she’s almost tempted enough to hold it again. To see that wolf, and see if she can’t demand answers from it. But she’s still got at least enough sense to know that bringing it out in the _camp,_ after what it just did – or tried to do – to Uthvir, would… be unwise.

And Pride and Curiosity are here, too.

The former happens upon her while she’s still staring at the offending bone shard.

“What happened?” he asks. “Are you alright?”

“…I’m fine,” she says, closing the pouch and securing it back at her belt. “I found another fragment.”

She turns to face him, to meet the uncertainty and worry in his gaze with her own. Whatever he was expecting her to say, it probably wasn’t that.

“Where?” he wonders.

“In the woods. In a flower,” she replies.

He frowns, and glares at the innocuous little pouch. She’d been half tempted to permanently banish it to her pack or saddlebags. But in the end, it had seemed more dangerous to risk losing it, somehow, or letting it fall into the wrong hands – Pride’s own, particularly – than to keep it close-but-untouched. For the time being.

“If that is the case, then I think it sounds more like the fragments are finding you,” he unhappily determines.

“Either that or Andruil is in the habit of liberally sprinkling her territory with smashed up wolf skull,” she agrees.

But there is a pattern, she thinks. The first fragment had come from the carving of a wolf. The second had come from a flower that she had seen in the dream of the russet wolf. She thinks of the slow arrow. Of the old stories. Wolves and dragons, moons and flowers and where the mind goes when it sleeps.

Reaching out, she catches Pride by the arm.

Her gives her a questioning look. She opens her mouth to say something, but she’s not certain what. It’s all so tangled up. She’d not even sure why she grabbed him, except that she keeps feeling like if she doesn’t, he’s going to slip away. Like she’ll blink and he’ll be gone. Or corrupted. Or she’ll look over and see that other wolf grinning from his shadow again.

She closes her mouth, and just squeezes him a bit.

“I will figure it out,” she promises.

“Not alone,” he promises back.

Then Thenvunin is shouting something about furs in his tent, and the one Curiosity’s pitching unbalances and topples over, and one of the hunters says the wrong thing to Uthvir and nearly gets backhanded clear across the camp.

She double-checks the little pouch, and with a sigh, follows Pride back out into the fray.

 

~

 

There are a lot of snide remarks over dinner about the lack of fresh meat. Uthvir retreats well before they begin, though, vanishing into their own tent, and not emerging again until the campfire is burning blue, and the sky is nearly all black. The magical flames don’t impede the view of the stars, nor the surrounding woods, which grow noisy and active with the sudden rousing of the nightlife. Creatures both large and small prowl the perimeter of the campsite. But nothing passes beyond the markers around it.

The red hunter makes their return appearance, still clad all in cloak and armour, as Thenvunin is laying into Pride again about the lack of un-furred blankets available to him.

“Enough,” Uthvir snaps. “Thenvunin, if It will stop your perpetual whining, you can sleep in my tent tonight. Nary a scrap of fur will be found in it. I will take this night’s watch.”

They glance towards her, but only briefly. Eyes glinting with the firelight.

Thenvunin rears as if he’s just been splashed with a bucket of cold water.

“As if I would! The impertinence! Everyone knows what a hunter means when they _invite_ someone to their sleeping space. I would not be caught dead in your tent,” he insists.

“Imply again that I would neglect a watch, Thenvunin, and I shall take legitimate offense,” Uthvir replies, with rather more snapping anger than warning in their tone. Thenvunin continues to bristle at their every word, in turn. The quiet evening conversation is broken up by more bickering and snarling, then, as the hunters watch their leader snipe with Mythal’s over questions of courtesy and custom and responsibility.

“Why not let Thenvunin take first watch?” Banathim suggests. “Since he has deemed his sleeping arrangements insufficient, and seems so dubious of our party’s skill at it.”

“I would rather not wake to find something big enough to breach the wards pissing on our tents in the morning, that is why,” Uthvir counters.

“I have been committed to military service for over two thousand years,” Thenvunin insists. “I know how to handle a watch!”

“Volunteering, then?” the red hunter asks, curling their lips and raising their brow in a fashion which manages to imply that Thenvunin just stumbled right into a trap. As if this whole argument was orchestrated in order to get him to accidentally volunteer himself for an unwanted task. Which Thenvunin clearly catches, and subsequently expresses his outrage towards.

She watches as the conversation turns in circles, around and around again, until somehow it ends up that Uthvir will be taking the night’s watch – for the entire night, by the sounds of it – and when Thenvunin at last storms off, it’s under the insistence that he has _earned_ the right to a peaceful night’s sleep and since the hunters are the ones hosting them, he may as well take it in their leader’s tent after all.

He glances towards her, briefly, as he makes his way into it. She only stares back at him for a moment, before he looks hurriedly away.

…Huh.

Apparently, Pride had been downright reasonable and reserved by the standards of his high-ranking peers. Though she’d already suspected that. But she doesn’t think Uthvir was actually angling to get Thenvunin to take the watch. Probably the opposite, in fact. They still strike her as distinctly on edge as they make their way towards one of the far points of the camp, and settle in there. Watching the shadows.

Their angle is such that their own is cast in front of them by the firelight. Clearly visible.

She watches them in the corner of her eye for a moment, until Curiosity claims her attention as they clean up the remnants of dinner, and the hunters begin to withdraw to their own tens. Only Banathim doesn’t seem eager to leave; settled by the fire, idly gnawing on some of the bones of her own successful kill.

“Have you tried any more with the shape-changing?” Curiosity asks her. “There are a lot of strange animals in the forests here. You should keep an eye out for them. I already saw a few that I might like to turn into, or try to, someday. There might be one that works for you. I was thinking, and it occurred to me that perhaps you just do not know the shape that would fit right.”

“I was a bit distracted from that,” she admits.

Banathim glances up towards them.

“Trying to change your shape?” the bear asks.

She stills. Curiosity hesitates a moment, too. They glance at one another.

“Just seeing if she can manage it,” her friend replies, after a moment.

Banathim gives them both a considering look. In the glow of the firelight, her eyes seem particularly hollow. It makes her think of Andruil’s halls, and the cooked bones strewn around the fire pits. The huntress and her hunters, and their hungry sort of magic.

“My mother used to say, ‘do not waste water on dead plants’. Some things are beyond the means of constructs, animals, artwork, and other things which might reflect the People, but are not People themselves,” the bear tells them.

She feels a brief pang of disappointment at that. And here she’d almost thought Banathim might be friendlier than most of the other hunters, after pulling that spirit out of the river. The urge to insist upon her personhood has become exhausted in her for the moment, though.

Curiosity stiffens, but then tilts her head, considering.

“You are Waking-born?” her friend asks.

“I am, at that,” Banathim confirms.

Curiosity scoots a little closer to the fire.

“You seem like a very accomplished shape-shifter. I have not met many Waking-born yet who are very adept at it. But a younger one described the process of changing his shape to me, and it seemed different to how I think of it. Maybe you could tell me a bit about what it is like for you?” she requests. “Mostly it is Dreaming-born who tend to hold animals forms and other shapes for long periods of time. At least, it is among Mythal’s people.”

“It is like that among hunters, too,” Banathim says. “When you are born to a body, it belongs to you in a way that it never can when you come to it through other means. From the start of your life, your vitality depends upon the rhythm of your heart. The strength of your bones. A living thing is a fragile thing. One wrong move, and it is living no more.”

“Spirits are fragile enough, too,” she feels compelled to mention. She thinks of holding that shard of Compassion in her hands. Of the little spirit the stormchasers had caught.

“Oh yes indeed,” Banathim agrees. “But spirits can twist and reshape themselves in ways that most Waking-born would not even think to. And Waking-born can withstand contradictions and denials and horrors that would break spirits in an instant. The longer either live for, though, the closer they come to one another. That is why we are one people. A hundred years. Two hundred years. A thousand. Waking-born learn that, in the end, all of us can be butchered down to the same base parts that define spirits. Dreaming-born weave themselves into their bodies, and forget what it is like to live beyond the confines of their skin. And so those born to bodies change them in ways that would have once seemed beyond them, and those born to dreams narrow their spectrum of preferences and perspectives.”

As strange and almost somber as the conversation is, for a moment, her mind flits back into memory. To Solas, and all his odd little quirks and preferences. His excessive self-portraits, anchoring an image that matched perfectly to the man she saw. As if simultaneously struggling to keep on defining himself, to hold onto who he was, but also to change and reshape the world around him as thoroughly as he could in the solid lines and shapes of his artwork.

 _I do not want to lose myself,_ she realizes. What if she does change her shape? What if she becomes something else? What if, bit by bit, she becomes more like the ancient elves?

What if that removes her from being who and what she is? A mortal elf. A Dalish elf.

The only one left.

“Were you afraid, the first time you changed shape?” she wonders.

Banathim looks at her for a long moment.

“I was thrilled,” the bear confesses, at last. “The only fear I knew was that I would be locked forever in some weak and spindly form.”

On that note, then, the hunter gets up from beside the fire, and lumbers off to her tent. She watches her go, and for a moment sits with Curiosity and listens to the crackling of the flames. Pride’s busy not far off, getting a headstart on dismantling Thenvunin’s tent, since it’s unlikely to see any use before morning.

Curiosity nudges her.

“So we just need to make you hate your body,” her friend reasons.

“That sounds like a terrible plan,” she decides.

“Well, we could probably just start with the one arm you have mixed feelings about anyway,” Curiosity reasons. “I mean technically it takes more effort to just change one part, but you are strange as it is, so perhaps we need to go about things completely differently. See if you can grow claws.”

“I think I would rather just sleep,” she admits.

“Oh, come on. Just for a little bit,” her friend cajoles.

She glances over to where Pride is still busy, and after a moment, relents.

But trying to focus on changing the shape of her hand doesn’t yield any productive results. After a while it just makes her palm itch, and her nails feel vaguely bruised; and then she remembers the weight of that anchor, and somehow sets off a sparking flare of unintentional magic that nearly singes Curiosity’s eyebrow, and they both agree to call it quits for the night.

By then, Pride’s done, anyway.

Their own tents are pitched not far off from Thenvunin’s, but closer to the edge of the camp. Curiosity heads into one, and she and Pride regard one another silently for a moment; and then, by unspoken agreement, head into the other.

They’re quiet as they strip down to their softer layers. She holds her bone fragment pouch for a moment, before dropping it into the middle of her shield, and arranging her weapons handily next to her bedroll. Pride puts his own beside hers, and offers her a questioning glance.

“Is this alright?” he asks, quietly.

She blinks.

“Is what alright?”

He gestures to the arrangement, and she realizes he’s asking permission to be close to her.

Smiling, she reaches over and pulls him in for a kiss. Sinking into him for a moment.

“Of course,” she whispers. 

 

~

 

She falls asleep wrapped safely up in her love’s arms.

She dreams strangely again. But not with the same terrifying, vivid danger as before, at least. Her perception is still different. The forest around them becomes a tangled, living net in the Fade. Twisting vines and waterfalls that loop on themselves, like glittering rings at the feet of mountains that migrate over fields of cloud and glass, and deep, murky depths, that go further and further down, the longer she stares at them. Unfamiliar spirits flit through the woven vines and distorted, surreal trees.

Some move like birds, or cats, or other beasts. A few drift along the currents of the water, or follow spider-web patterns of energy. It would be marvelous, and in a way it is, except for the shards. Broken pieces of things, like smashed glass sculptures, litter the ground everywhere she walks. As if some great predator has torn through this part of the Fade, and indiscriminately killed anything it could clamp its jaws onto. The shattered husks of dead spirits bleed some power back into the dreamscape around them. Tiny, shining trickles of light. But most of them are empty husks. There’s no warmth to any of the pieces she touches, like there had been with Compassion.

She thinks of Fortune, and Charity, and of scooping up the shards. But there are too many, and even so, she doesn’t know what could be done for them that would be better than leaving them to try and cycle back into this environment around them.

Did the wolf do this?

But though she feels, at times, as if there are eyes on her, she never so much as glimpses its shape out of the corner of her vision. And in searching, she even finds Pride. Unlike before, when she’d tried to reach him in the ruin. He doesn’t even seem to notice the plethora of spirit corpses, or the mountains, or anything far beyond the corner of forest they’re in.

The Fade moves a certain way around him, she notes. He moves through it in almost the same way Fortitude had. Folding through layers, and sifting through his surroundings. Whether it’s because of the location or his own talent for dreams, she can’t say, but he has a direct impact on his surroundings. And she can see it. The ripples he casts, and how things shift to meet his expectations. How the trees change until they look more like the ones in Mythal’s gardens. Interspersed with some of the more impressive examples from Andruil’s own lands.

His thoughts, like his breaths, brush everything, and the dream breathes back.

She looks at herself, and is suddenly given to the strange notion that it’s not doing the same thing with her. That it used to, but now it isn’t. Or at least, now it’s doing it less.

Bit by bit.

But then she sees the dark tendrils trailing down from Pride’s steps. Whispers of the Blight leading towards distant rivers that pulse like angry, infected veins. It distracts her from everything else, as she struggles and tries to explain the difference in what she’s seeing to Pride himself.

In the morning, she wakes to the sounds of frantic shouting.

Specifically, one person frantically shouting. With a familiar voice. She’s armed and out of the tent before she’s completely awake, some part of her mind backtracking to other days, and other interrupted camps, and she half expects to find them set upon by Venatori agents or red Templars, or, more likely, wild animals.

The dawn catches her eyes, and she realizes it’s no such thing. The camp is fine, even if the other occupants are being roused by the noise. The calls are coming from beyond the camp borders. Cries for help that have other, reflexive segments of her brain firing, back even further, to human hunters and just regular Templars, and young scouts fleeing from danger. But she’s waking up a bit more; remembering where she actually is, and why she recognizes that voice.

Uthvir is already moving towards the source, quick and sharp like a scythe through the trees. She ploughs in after them, following the source of the cries. The sun’s barely dawning, most of its face still buried behind the mountains. The forest is dark in the faint early light, damp with dew, and tinged with a frostbitten wind. The red hunter is a flash of crimson, moving with the unerring confidence of someone who isn’t just following a sound, but has likely surmised the actual location of it themselves.

She hears a few others following, crashing through the undergrowth behind them as they reach a grove.

It’s a small one. More like a gap where the roots and branches of several large trees have prevented the growth of nearly anything else, and left an opening where only smaller plants and shoots have managed to survive. In the middle of the grove is a small, miserable-looking grey fox, soaked through and surrounded by a crackling hum of magic. Trap wards gleam beneath the undergrowth; but the real source of fox’s distress seems to be the occupant of a nearby tree.

She barely glimpses the large, predatory cat before it bounds down and away, vanishing back into the forest gloom.

She pauses, as the little grey fox looks at herself and Uthvir with an expression that manages to simultaneously convey relief at being rescued, and extreme dissatisfaction with his particular rescuers.

It eases somewhat when Pride arrives, hot on her heels; a groggy Curiosity not far behind him.

There’s an awkward moment of silence as everyone assesses the situation.

“…Could someone please let me out of the trap?” Ghilashim finally asks.

 _“No!”_ Curiosity blurts, looking quite content to leave him there.

“I am almost impressed,” Uthvir decides. “If I was in a better mood, I would free you on principle of your impressive ability to get _just_ far enough with your plans to become a massive inconvenience. But as it stands, I believe I will let your comrades decide your fate.”

They sneer down at the miserable-looking little fox, who scowls back at them, and then turn and almost immediately begin withdrawing from the forest. They pass her as they go, but don’t so much as look at her.

“Come now,” Pride says. “You could deactivate those with a wave of your hand. This will take _us_ at least an hour.”

“And yet, my time is still valuable enough that I have already wasted too much of it on fool children,” the red hunter decides.

They carry on, then, back towards the camp, leaving herself and her friends to look back at poor Ghilashim.

Who drips, and wilts, just a bit.

“How did you even get in there?” Pride finally demands. “You are supposed to be in Arlathan!”

She looks at Curiosity, who is rather conspicuously not meeting anyone’s gaze. Though that could be because she is currently making for one drowsy and disgruntled lion. Reaching over, she grabs said drowsy and disgruntled lion’s feathers, and gives them a light tug.

“What?” Curiosity demands.

She raises an eyebrow.

Her friend sighs, and then shakes her head as Pride turns and gives her an expectant look, too. It doesn’t take much to get her to relent.

“He said he just wanted to watch the hunters a bit more. It would have been fine if he had still been an elf, but he managed to transform and he has giant baby fox eyes when he does that. And I thought it would be fine if he just made a nuisance of himself in Andruil’s hall. I did not think he would be stupid enough to follow us.”

“It was not stupid!” Ghilashim insists. “I am on a special mission!”

“No you are not,” Pride says.

“…No, I am not,” the little fox admits. “But I said I was a good guide, and look! I managed to follow you! I even made it through most of the night. And I had almost figured out how to get out of the trap before that giant, slavering beast showed up. That is better than a lot of guides, especially since I have never actually been through this route before.”

“That actually is pretty good,” she allows. “How did you get caught in the trap?”

“I stepped in it,” Ghilashim tells her, a little snidely.

But then he wilts again, and sniffs a bit.

“I was trying to find something to eat. I did not want to reduce rations in the packs, so I thought I could catch something, like the hunters were telling me. There was a hare, and I am faster as a fox, but… I thought I could shortcut through here and then I got trapped. And I have been stuck like this for _hours._ It hurts,” he admits, his eyes welling up.

She sheaths her blade, as Pride’s expression softens, and he moves over towards the ring of runes, and starts methodically unravelling the magic in them. Curiosity lets out a sigh and moves to help as well.

“I will be right back,” she decides.

“Where are you going?” Pride wonders.

“To see if one of the other hunters feels like helping,” she says. “Keep an eye out for any large predators, if you please.”

Heading back to the camp, manages to catch Banathim as the bear is emerging from her own tent; ironically more keen on mornings, it seems, than Curiosity is, despite the reputation of her animal form. After a brief explanation, the somewhat amused-looking hunter agrees to follow her back to the grove, and takes in the scene of the disaster.

“There is an easier way,” the bear says, lumbering forwards between Pride and Curiosity. “Any hunter’s trap must yield its quarry to a hunter, in turn.”

So saying, Banathim closes her jaws around Ghilashim, and lifts him by his scruff. She carries him straight out of the trap that Pride and Curiosity are still attempting to dismantle with no trouble at all; and the wards go dull, and cease to gleam.

The bear dumps the fox onto a nearby patch of moss. Ghilashim shakes and then immediately transforms from a soaked, unhappy animal into a soaked, unhappy elf. He lets out a long breath and pats himself. Stretches his arms and nearly topples into a fern.

“Thank you!” he exclaims.

“Next time tread more carefully, little stowaway,” Banathim advises. “If we had made an early start, you might have been left to less kindly jaws.”

Ghilashim swallows, and then nods.

“I know,” he admits. Then he looks a bit stricken. “I almost _died._ ”

She sighs, and watches him carefully pick himself up. Looking over, she shares a glance with Pride. They’re a day into their mission, which was already moved up to an urgent timescale, and however well Ghilashim managed to fare in following them, she doesn’t suppose anyone will just let him walk all the way back again. Which means that either someone will have to escort him – and at this point, she’s beginning to harbour deep suspicions that he’d just find a way to elude or bribe or manipulate his escort – or let him come along.

On their incredibly dangerous trek into the Deep Roads.

Maybe, she thinks, Thenvunin will actually do something useful and produce a solution to this dilemma.

But judging by the way he looks at them when they get back, that’s… not really on the table.

**Author's Note:**

> Important Stuff That Happened During Smutty Bits: First exchanges of 'vhenan' as an endearment.


End file.
